One aspect of SAR that I enjoyed was pubic outreach. We presented to quite a few school groups, especially. You can't go too deeply in an hour, but you can cover important basics.

It came to pass that we were called out for a night time search for a young boy. At some point I was told that the young man we were searching for had been in attendance at one of my presentations.

He must have been paying attention, because as night came on, he stopped wandering aimlessly and snuggled down to get some shut eye. In fact, he was sound asleep when the first searchers came by. With the dawn,he arose and was quickly located.

This seemed to be a recurring pattern - often discovery came with dawn or within an hour or so of sunrise.

Prevention isn't as dramatic as responding to an emergency and it may be hard to quantify the results (How many people didn't get lost or injured as a result of your gabbing??) but it undoubtedly is effective.